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    Book: Stalin’s backfiring diplomacy led to the Iron Curtain

    After WWII, Stalin tried open foreign policy, but his diplomatic failures led to the Iron Curtain dividing Europe during the Cold-War, a historian argues.
    by Melissa De Witte-Stanford Dec 27, 2019 1 minute
    Churchill looks to be saying something as he, Truman, and Stalin, who is dressed entirely in white, shake hands together in a triple shake, with Churchill and Stalin on either side of Truman

    Many historians consider the division of Europe in the aftermath of World War II inevitable, because, they believe, Soviet leader Josef Stalin was eager for communism to sweep the continent. But historian Norman Naimark disagrees.

    Stalin didn’t plan to have an Iron Curtain descend across Europe, says Naimark, professor in Eastern European studies at Stanford University. Instead, the Soviet premier sought a more open and flexible approach to his foreign policy, even with neighboring countries such as Finland, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

    But Stalin’s diplomacy failed as often as it succeeded, says Naimark who has recently published a new book reassessing Stalin’s postwar foreign policies, Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty (Belknap Press, 2019).

    And it was the failures that brought down the Iron Curtain.

    Here, Naimark explains his research on the postwar order in Europe:

    The post Book: Stalin’s backfiring diplomacy led to the Iron Curtain appeared first on Futurity.

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